If you could host a dinner and anyone you invite was sure to come, who would you invite?
See, my problem is, I can never just take these prompts at face-value. Does this include anyone living or dead? How big is the table? And who is doing the catering, because I’m not cooking for lots of people!
Dialing down from “facetious response,” I have two possibilities. (I won’t talk much about the third, which is to invite known criminals and have them executed before eating.) The first is summoning a host of famous people I admire and would like to talk with. Barack Obama, Gene Hackman, Humphrey Bogart, and Charlie Chaplin are the ones who immediately surface. Mary Pickford, Irving Thalberg, and Lillian Gish also come to mind. (I was always a big silent film and early film studios fan.) Further thought would reveal more celebrities from the movies, but I’d have to have Vsevelod Meyerhold, the famous Russian director, and Peter Brooks, the famous English director, also in attendance.
The other possibility is a table (or tables!) filled with past students who worked on my theatre productions and with whom I’m still in touch today. Of course, “in touch” ranges from random likes or birthday wishes on Facebook through regular contact. Since I once said that my true legacy as a professor was my students, this is the ideal way to celebrate that idea.
But what to serve? Any suggestions? Let me know, and please like and follow!
MUSOFYR 